Gone

One of the routes I run takes me up and down a main business district in my town. And, there's a plot of land that has been vacant for about 10 years or so, adjacent to a lovely historical building.

I remember the buildings on that site because one of them was the computer store where I worked in high school. My first job! So many first experiences there. I learned about hard work. I learned the basics of running a retail business. My boss introduced me to falafel.

But today that building is gone.

There was an adjacent building, a beautiful red brick 2-story commercial building, for a travel agency. It had a neon sign hanging over the sidewalk. "SEE THE WORLD BEFORE YOU LEAVE IT!" I saw that sign for all of my childhood, just about every day, even before I understood what it meant.

That building is gone too.

These things are temporary, and it is harsh for me to realize that in the present, these places don't exist anymore. Instead I tell stories and share memories of what happened in those places, and how those places were parts of my life.

What will we say about our places, our selves, and our lives? What do we say, now? And more importantly, what will we *do*?

I Never

As we learn and grow and live we create the story that is our life. We write that story intentionally... or not. Others read it. We live it.

A good story requires editing and revision. It's not static. It changes over time. It expands. It contracts. It has a journey and lessons learned. It can be fun or serious, or a little of both and everything in between. It can be long. It can be short. It can be all of these things.

But first we must ensure we're allowing ourselves to be open to many possibilities, many directions, many plots, and many subplots. What are you leaving out of your story that really could be let back in? How can you be more open to what's happening right now and do something truly great with that?

Big thanks to Whitney Hess for inspiring this one; our conversation around this topic will be on the next ep of Designing Yourself.

Without People

As I look back through my life, work inclusive, I see a very clear pattern. From early on, I became a rather independent person who preferred to be alone. It came out through things I did, and the ways I acted, and I didn't realize it.

I touched on this briefly last year:

Some of my choices [in life and work] gave me this opportunity to be invisible. Photography, as I discussed with my friend Paul this weekend, let me hide behind a camera. Doing work in computers let me hide behind a screen. Hiding. Not showing myself. 

That's not a coincidence; it's how I operated. I did things on my own so that I could get all of the credit, all of the attention, all of the joy - and I ignored the "all of the blame" part.

The other day I had the good fortune to participate in a friend's design class; she invited me to critique her students' final presentations. We got to talking over lunch and learned we both love photography. She asked what kind of photography I liked - I answered architectural. When it came to explaining why, though, a light bulb went off in my head: there are no people in those pictures. None.

Buildings aren't people. They don't move spontaneously (usually). They don't show emotion as people do. They are not alive. They are objects ultimately. Those facets coupled with my overwhelming comfort to do things solo, preferably behind a screen, was showing up in my art.

And the attempts to include people were very slow and cautious... experiments. I recall an assignment from my high school photo class in which we needed to photograph strangers. And wow, for an introvert like me? That was terrifying. But I did it, and some of the photos were quite nice. Years and years later, I dabbled in anonymous street photography (still hidden). And I did end up doing portraits of friends, some with constructed scenarios and some for more formal holiday cards.

UX Without People

There's a direct comparison to my day job and my work. I started programming, solo. I slowly reached out to BBSes, GEnie, and user groups and later thrived in a US mail-based user group.  Eventually I became fascinated by the ways software and hardware interacted with people, and so I moved over to UI - still not working directly with users, but closer. My first gigs in UX didn't involve research nor talking with users, so I had to be a magical idea person. Finally, now I'm in UX and life work where I must work with people in order to help them.

(As an aside, this also shows up here: you're reading this, but it's not a conversation and I'm not getting any feedback in the moment. That's actually easier for me to handle, otherwise we might be talking about it. At one point I conflated blogs and journals and even Twitter with directness. But there's a layer between us, a technology and societal messiness that is in our way. I love that we can still connect about this topic, or something else, even though this is not a conversation.)

So I understand that whole "magical UX/Creative genius" thing because I really loved being that person, and early in my career I really couldn't see myself as not being that person. It is an amazing feeling to be the one who comes up with all of these ideas out of thin air and all of them are loved. (Or most of them.) That's exciting. That's fun. But it's not enough. It doesn't work without people because life doesn't work without people.

Observation, understanding, action

In and of itself, noticing this pattern isn't action. It doesn't change anything in and of itself. But being highly observant of my behaviors and my patterns, both in the present and in the past, helps me be far more mindful and present now.

36

Today I turn 36. It is a year without glamour, without any additional privileges by itself, and simply is. 

My previous year on this planet, in this life, was an amazing one. I learned an incredible amount. I fucked up a lot. I succeeded. I started to allow me to be me. I was scared, happy, thrilled, excited, bored, tired, loved, loving, hated, disrespected, respected, admired, disgusted, disillusioned, befriended, comforted. All of that, and millions more things, billions. 

And I want to share 36 things with you. These are things that I currently believe. I may not believe them next year, and probably didn't 2 or 5 or 10 years ago. I love lists. Indulge me.

1. I am way too big to be defined by labels applied by myself or others.
2. Being present in every moment is supremely important and incredibly challenging. 
3. Life is too fucking short to be in a job filled with fighting. 
4. I'm very privileged, and I want to use that privilege to truly help others. 
5. Often I say things before I truly feel them and believe them.
6. I have to inspire myself, be my own hero, be my own best advocate - always.
7. The past is fixed but the way we interact with it can be changed.
8. Everything, everyone is always changing.
9. Guilty pleasures are bullshit. Love what you love. 
10. No one is keeping score in any way.
11. Exercise has been empowering and transformative in ways I could not have ever predicted. 
12. Every single person I encounter in a day, and every single person I do not encounter, is fully formed with her own dreams, wishes, beliefs, concerns, joys, suffering, and love.
13. Self-awareness is power.
14. The struggles of parenting are outweighed, significantly, by the inspiration and beauty of seeing my son live his life. 
15. Nearly everything I thought was important is not really that important.
16. Not choosing something is actually choosing something; non-decision is a decision.
17. All of the things I thought I couldn't do are things I actually can do.
18. I care about aesthetics in myself, others, and objects. 
19. I now have a good sense of what makes a good boss and what does not make a good boss; I've worked for both and all types in between.
20. I am an introvert but love talking with people. 
21. Dismissing ideas and people out of hand is foolish.
22. Ask, ask, ask.
23. Compassion rules.
24. I am hard on myself, really hard.
25. My body knows what's up.
26. Gender is not binary. 
27. Thinking something is very different than feeling it, which in turn is very different than acting on it. 
28. There have been some people close to me all this time and I have caused them pain and hurt. 
29. Death only changes a relationship with a person; that relationship carries on. 
30. I can and should surprise myself more often.
31. I can and should surprise others more often. It's fun. 
32. Some things pass and some things stay; this doesn't mean the things that are here will always be here. 
33. I drink a lot of water.
34. Everything is going to be okay, and everything is okay.
35. Death may come at any moment, and I will strive to always be ready for it. 
36. People are not machines. 

May these 36 thoughts spread and bloom and fly away from me. 

Replay

There are events in my life I replay in my head at a moment's notice. Sometimes it's  great stuff, like my wedding day or the day I met my son, and the way I feel when I'm replaying those moments is hard to articulate - but I feel warm, comfortable, confident. 

Then there's the shitty stuff. My brain is filled with memories of embarrassing and sad situations from my life too. Sometimes I replay these and until recently, I never tried to do anything with them. I just watched them play. I'd be in the car, and think about something that happened in 2nd grade, and it would just be overwhelming . Not to the point of pulling over, but something that would absolutely take my energy right out of the present. Haunted me.

But there's something I realized recently and shared:

The events of the past are fixed, yes. But the way we experience them and relate to them is always in flux because that happens *now*.

— Paul McAleer (@paulmcaleer) September 23, 2013

Expanding on that a bit: the way that I've seen these memories in my head is like I'm watching TV. It's me on the screen, I can see it, but I can't interact with it.

And then I was taught that I can, in fact, interact with it. While I can no longer change what happened - ever - I can always change my relationship in the present with that memory. So the things that I've held with me, the things I deem embarrassing, are chances for me to step in with who I am now and react differently. 

Because I'm a geek I like to compare this to time travel. I can go anyplace in the past, and I can't change the events, but I can interact with what's happening knowing that - to quote Faraday from LOST - whatever happened, happened. 

So what's in the interaction? Usually me trying to be more compassionate with myself, honestly. Not being so hard on myself or, if I am hard on myself, accepting that and trying to understand why that is.  In contrast, I relive the good stuff to just feel good in a moment. Sometimes I need that comfort.

All that said, this idea has significantly changed the way I think about the past. I respect it. The script is written. But I can reinterpret it now, and I bet I'll reinterpret it differently in 5 years, 5 decades (hopefully!), or even 5 minutes. We're always changing, always. 

The Constant

Writing is the thread that has been a part of my life, always. I've taken it for granted.

I really took a knack to writing when I was in grammar school. I wrote a book for a Scholastic Book Fair contest called What Year is This?  Of course it involved time travel. The lead character went back in time, met her own mother, and then the space-time continuum went kablooey. Happens!

Later still in grammar school, I was the creator and writer of a series of magazines over a 3 year run. These were paper magazines, ones I put together by myself initially and later with a staff. My best friend Greg was on staff, and soon I had a good third of my class on staff with me. We published something like 200 issues, nearly every week.  

I wrote for Loadstar 64  and Loadstar 128  - reviews of computer software. The young geek in me wanted to get published in COMPUTE!'s Gazette  or Ahoy!  or RUN . That never happened.

In high school and college, I wrote more things for myself. I wrote tons of poetry that, I trust, is not that great. I started journaling. 

I journaled on my website, writing nearly every day for years, from 1999 until about 2001. I co-wrote The Daily Ping with my good friend Ryan for 13 years, starting in 2000 - something every other day. I wrote interactive web fiction "exhibits" for several years. 

I continued to write on my website, just not in the same format. I blogged. I LiveJournaled for a short time. I used Vox. I kept trying to find the right way, the best way, to get my words out. You see it today in blogging, and tweeting, and, and, and....

That's irrelevant. The important thing is that I've been writing for almost all of my life, and I have been quick to assume it will always be there for me. Writing has been the skill I have used every day of my life, and it is the skill I will continue to use until I can no longer do it.

But it is a part of me. It's high time I say so. 

I'm a writer. 

Father's Day

This is a bittersweet day.

It is a painful reminder for me that my father is no longer here. It's an emptiness I carry with me. I can't simply call up my dad, or have a beer with him. He has been gone for 15 years. But, he helped shape me into the person I have been, the person I am, and the person I will be. So in that sense, he is always still with me. 

He is with me, then, when I am with my son. Lately I've been able to look into his eyes, look at his face, and start to see the young man he will be some day. My mind races with possibilities. Who will he become? What direction will his life take?   It's exciting to dream about the person he will be.

But it's also exciting to simply be here with him and love and enjoy the person he is now. I can not imagine my life without him, for he has made mine all the richer. I only hope I do the same for him.

Why I Still Love Email

When I was a kid, I loved getting mail. It was exciting for me to think that I could put make a letter, put it in a blue box, and get something back a week later. Magical stuff.

As a young geek I joined a unique Commodore user group: Meeting 64/128 Users Through the Mail. The group's name truly says it all. I loved being a member of that group and, for a while, I was its youngest member. I forged friendships with people all over the US and the world - and man, getting air mail from England? So far away? Exciting!

Between that group, Loadstar, and magazines, the mail connected young me to the world outside my bedroom.

It feels like email

This year after IA Summit, I made a concerted effort to use Twitter much more than I previously had. I followed more people and responded to tweets more often. I dug in. But when I step back and look at the way I use Twitter now, it looks a lot like the way I use email.

I love Inbox Zero, but Inbox One (patent pending) with a fresh message of warm words from a friend? Even better.

But email can hurt too

 Like any medium, though, email isn't necessarily all sunshine and rainbows. I've talked about how I used to lean on email to circumvent face-to-face conversations and that's something Will Sansbury picked up on in a comment on Whitney Hess's blog entry.

In a face-to-face interaction, a request is a negotiation of spoken words and subtle body language, and we don't walk away with the other person holding an improper expectation without allowing it to happen.

Will's point is a very good one. I'd say that for a time I went too far in the other direction and used email and regular ol' mail so much that I saw them as the only ways to communicate with other people. I don't feel that way anymore, but I understand the power in the ability to send a message to anyone - anyone with an email address - and say anything. I mean, I sent Peter Buck a letter telling him I thought a tab for "Feeling Gravitys Pull" I found on rec.music.rem was off by a key, and I thought including a SASE would guarantee a reply. Nope! 35-year-old me wouldn't do that (I'd totally just do a Snapchat) but 14-year-old me definitely did.

Similarly, this is why I do videos for some topics.  It's still a one-way thing, for now, but it also lets you see me and what I'm saying and maybe even I'll make a gesture or three. It's a different medium.

Magic

That all said, I still love email. It is a connection, a relationship, as Whitney said. We often shoo aside email like it's the oldest and worst thing ever. But it has survived and is still here with us, decades since its creation. Its form has changed over time and we've tried to change it (push notifications, DMs, chat) but in the end there is something still magical and powerful about composing a message - composing! - and tapping Send.

This mess drives me nuts

The title of this post is something I said as a little kid. It was a phrase I said quite a bit, so much so that it ended up in my baby book as one of my favorite things to say. And there's a part of me that really let this idea stick and let messiness affect me.

Until relatively recently, I'd see not taking out the trash or cleaning up as a personal failing. In my continuing practice of understanding myself, I've sought out why  this is. Because truly, not all of me wants to make things immediately neat. There's a part of me  that looks at a mess and has these really negative thoughts. A lot of me really doesn't care.

Part of the reason I put so much value in being neat is because I had put so much value in things . As I've noted here, literal things can generally be controlled. There's a part of me that really likes that notion; it makes me feel good and like I'm accomplishing something. Straightening up or cleaning up has a very clear outcome: something will be less messy. And for me that was a positive boost, something that felt really good once done (although I haven't really cared for the act of cleaning - in the moment - very much). I also have a hard time half-assing a project or not finishing it: once I've started, I must  finish. (That's another topic.)

I started zooming out and looking at what was happening at the same time as all of this. And there's so much. It could be that I could have some time to write or think or be . It could be that my son, who hasn't seen his daddy all day, wants to play with some cars. It could be that my wife, who hasn't seen her husband all day, wants to talk and connect. It could be... almost anything else.

In those moments, then, I pause and take a breath. I ask myself, "Is this really the thing I want and need to be doing right now?" And sometimes, yes, I need to take out the trash. Not exciting. That's okay. And there's a part of me that will be super happy I'm doing it. But all too often I've constructed such artificial importance around neatness as to take away from what is truly important: people.

I strongly suspect I won't let things get to a Sims level of dirtiness, ever - we're not going to have dirty dishes stacked on the floor due to a full kitchen sink - but I'm becoming more comfortable with having a little mess, having a little imperfection.